1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a glass cutting machine and concerns more precisely an automatic vertical machine with pneumatic actuator.
Wall machines are already widely used for the industrial cutting of glass or plastics in the form of plates or strips disposed vertically on edge, a cutting wheel moving from top to bottom, guided in this movement by a vertical support. This solution is preferred to the conventional flat cutting systems, which have the drawback of requiring a large sized cutting table and which call for many precautions on the part of users in handling the plates to be cut without breaking them. So called wall or vertical machines avoid these drawbacks and can be readily placed in the corner of a workshop or shop. They include essentially a horizontal gutter serving as container for the glass plate, a vertical back-rest running along this gutter on which the plate leans with a slight slant so as to prevent it from tipping forwards and a cutting-wheel carrying carriage sliding on a vertical ramp placed opposite a post serving as bearing point for the plate during the cutting operation. The carriage associated with a counterweight is operated by means of a handle by a user who manually cuts the glass prepositioned in the machine.
These manual machines obviously have capacities in use limited to the cutting rate which a user can achieve, because of the weight of the carriage and because of the force which must be exerted on the wrist at the time of cutting. There is also a limitation to the sizes of glass cut since a single person cannot move this carriage vertically to an inaccessible height. Finally, when the cutting line has been made, the glass is broken manually by the person who must, for that, create a shock on the piece to be cut and hold it.